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From: motcid!ashbya@uunet.uu.net (Adam J. Ashby)
Newsgroups: comp.dcom.telecom
Subject: Re: Phone Service in the UK Two Decades Ago
Message-ID: <15377@accuvax.nwu.edu>
Date: 11 Dec 90 16:36:41 GMT
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X-Telecom-Digest: Volume 10, Issue 878, Message 8 of 11


In <15309@accuvax.nwu.edu> zippy@chaos.cs.brandeis.edu (Patrick Tufts)
writes:

->John Slater writes:

->[in reply to the assertion that, in the US (but not the UK) you can
->order a pizza via cellular from your car and get it just as you arrive
->home.]

->I don't know what prompts you to make this insular assumption. Of
->course we can do this: we have pizza delivery services, and we have
->one of the best and most successful cellular setups in the world.

>Not to nitpick, but :-) :-)
>Few pizza places in England have heard of delivery service.  When I
>was at the University of Essex, the local pizza place said `of course,
>we deliver' ... to the central loading dock of the school, that is.
>Not a one of my flatmates (20 of them, all Brits) had ever heard of
>having a pizza delivered.

I think that perhaps you (and your 20 Brit flatmates) led a very
sheltered life.  All over England a small pizza delivery chain is
springing up, you may recognise the name: Dominos.  They are the
latest competition that Pizza Express is experiencing, having had it
pretty much their own way for at least the last four years.  Of
course, I may be presenting a very distorted view, as I am basing my
experiences on where I lived over the last four years, which were
major metropoli such as Gloucester, Maidenhead and Wokingham.

>ObPhone question: Why is it that a UK -> US phone call is much more
>expensive than a US -> UK call?

Very basic economics should provide the answer to that one, but if you can't
work it out I'll give you a few pointers....

The two markets involved:

U.K. approximately 50 million people
U.S. approximately 250 million people

The market suppliers:

U.K. British Telecom plus a very small %ge by Mercury
U.S. AT&T, MCI, Sprint et al. desperately vying for customers.

Of course, one could always argue that price difference reflects the
need for the service, the U.K. can learn very little from calling the
U.S. thus the service is doesn't need to be cheap.


	Adam Ashby  ...!uunet!motcid!ashbya  +1 708 632 3876